Bertinetti slowed down and circled the Russian plane. He rocked his wings from side to side and as he came up alongside, he could see the pilot in the cockpit of the large Russian aircraft looking back at him. With a subtle pressure against his sidestick, Bertinetti flashed him the weapon-coated underside of the Falcon, while transmitting on the VHF Guard international frequency for the Russian to turn around and head back into Russian airspace.

Meanwhile, as per SOPs—standard operating procedures—MacDonald was providing cover for Bertinetti from above and behind.

Suddenly and unexpectedly the Russian dived.

Perplexed as to what the Russian was doing, Bertinetti followed it down. Next moment he heard an exclamation over the radio from MacDonald.

“Holy shit, Lead. We’ve been bounced. Four bandits at six o’clock.”

From the corner of his eye Bertinetti saw a flash as a missile streaked toward them across the sky, doubtless a passive infrared K-74M2—brutally maneuverable due to its advanced-thrust vectoring, which made it almost impossible to escape from and the primary close-range missile of a Russian Sukhoi T-50 PAK-FA stealth fighter.

Stealth fighter! Christ! That’s why my systems didn’t see the son of a bitch!

Bertinetti’s brain was scrambling to absorb all this new and unexpected information. Even as he accepted what must have happened there was a blinding flash and MacDonald’s F-16 vanished into a million pieces at the center of a fireball.

The Ilyushin Il-76 was the decoy and the Americans had been ambushed.

Bertinetti’s survival instinct kicked in. All the hours of flying drills and exercises and avoiding rock falls and breakages ensuring that he acted rather than froze. Survive!

He first rolled his aircraft upside down and then pulled it into a steep dive, buying himself that survival time. As he did so, the blood drained from his brain under the G-force and he felt the suit inflate and tighten around his thighs. No missile alarms. That maneuver had thrown them off balance, as he hoped it might.

Now they would be confident. Only him left. They would assume they could take him down easily.

Out of the dive and now he climbed, pushing the throttle through the afterburner gate and feeling the kick in his back as it lit behind him. As he did so, he saw four distinct dots on the horizon, despite his vision greying out from the G-force.

Four of you bastards. No wonder you are so confident. But I’ll take one of you with me. Leroy was my friend.

He turned to face them, and sure enough, there they were: two pairs of Russia’s very latest “super weapons,” as the aviation press had dubbed them when they had made their first international appearance at Britain’s Farnborough Air Show. But this was no air show, this was for real.